By: Rev. Dale Turner

Something I like to do on occasion is to meander through cemeteries, reading and recording the epitaphs. I would be embarrassed by this if I were not aware that thousands of others are intrigued by tombstone inscriptions. Several books have been published about them. The first known epitaphs go back to the early Egyptians. These were dull and prosaic. Not until Elizabethan times did tombstone inscriptions begin to assume a literary character. Of all of these, undoubtedly the best known is that of William Shakespeare, buried at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. His marker reads:

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To digg the dust encloased heare,
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And curst be he yt moves my bones."

Modern customs in this country usually call for only the name and dates of birth and death of the deceased on the marker. But generations ago, a more detailed account of each life was carved into the stone. Sometimes the manner of death was also recorded. Three of my favorites are:

"This is the grave of Mike O'Day
Who died defending his right of way.
His right was clear, his will was strong.
But he's just as dead as if he were wrong."

"Beneath the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease
He's not here, there's only the pod,
Pease shelled out and went to God."

And from Arizona's Boot Hill Cemetery:

"Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a forty-four
No Less. No More."

I haven't seen this one but reportedly carved in stone in a small cemetery near Albany, N.Y., is the epitaph:

"Here lies Henry Edsel Smith. Born 1903. Died 1942. Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was."

One of the best ways to determine what we want from life is to attempt to write our own epitaph. Some have done that. After struggling for a lifetime against what seemed insurmountable troubles, yet producing immortal words to enrich to world, Robert Louis Stevenson penned his own:

"Here lies one who meant well, tried a little and failed much."

President Harry S. Truman asked for and got the simple inscription:

"A Good Public Servant."

It may take a second reading to grasp the double meaning of another simple inscription, requested by Clark Gable:

"Back to the Silents."

This is on the tomb of Ed Wynn in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles.

"Dear God. Thanks, Ed Wynn."

George Burns suggested that his marker read:

"I wish I were reading this."

And when Johnny Carson was asked by a reporter what he would like his epitaph to be, he replied:

"I'll be right back."

When Horace Mann, one of America's famed educators, died, people wanted to place a fitting marker above his tomb. The choice was made from the closing words of his address to a graduating class at Antioch College:

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

In Westminster Abbey is buried John Gay, English poet and dramatist. His marker reads:

"Here lies the ashes of Mr. John Gay, the warmest friend, the gentlest companion, the most benevolent of men who maintained independency in low circumstance of fortune, integrity in the midst of a corrupt age, and serenity of mind, which conscious goodness alone can give, through the whole course of his life."

It is a marker that each of us might wish to deserve.

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